Collective KŁAK is on tour and it’s going to Dresden.
A plan is simple: we want to visit a friendly place to refresh old and make new friendships, and it so happens that we have a lot to say…so we would like to talk about:
– ideas of our commitment,
– the adventures and experience gathered over the last few years in activism,
– the pleasures and problems in creating queer movement in Poznan,
– the place that we want to find for our activities
and – above all – about our “new” struggle with anti-abortion law.

See You there!

About KŁAK Collective

We are a queer-anarchist collective and have been active in Poznań for several years. In our understanding, queer is an idea that helps to understand that different oppressions and exclusions interfere and cross with each other. We want to be aware of these mechanisms so that we can act in a way that’s as including as possible by learning from our mistakes. Queer doesn’t have to be understood as a sophisticated product of academic dialogue. It can be a radical social critique and practice that broadens the possibilities and horizons of grassroot liberation movements. Queer as a strategy helps us not to forget about these whose class position, social background, gender, disabilities or non-heteronormative desires put beyond dominating stories and social structures.

Anarchism as we see it is the belief that we can create a world that’s based on direct democracy, where each person has an influence on issues that concern them. Anarchism enables us not only to envision alternatives to the dominating system, but also to create spaces which start to function based on the principles close to those who co-create them. Till 2015 we co-created the Od:zysk squat where we used to organize benefit parties to help different small collectives. We also used to organize Queer Fests – festivals that aimed to be a space for networking the budding queer movement, for learning different activist methods from each other and for questioning status quo by exploring theoretical problems. At our events and parties we tried to develop the idea of safer space – to make the participants and ourselves aware of how many different privileges we have in our society and how people who don’t have them lose the access to public space – whether it’s because of the economic or background issues, sexual orientation or gender. We tried to create a space that makes it possible to include different people and groups whose access to public space is limited and to sensitize ourselves to these exclusions.

Unfortunately, the building where the Od:zysk squat was located has been sold and during the last year its actions, its inhabitants and collectives had to cope with great pressure from the owner as well as from the nationalist-hooligans groups that intensified attacks on our squat. Squating which was supposed to be a social protest against neoliberal changes in the society has been strongly criminalized. We were one of the collectives functioning on the Od:zysk squat so we feel the need to have a stable space where we could continue our work as well as make it accessible for other homeless liberation initiatives. We’d also like to work out traumatic events that took place during the process of losing our squat. Another local context is the political situation in Poland. On one hand Poznań is a city dominated by neoliberal politics adjusted to make it easier for investments which are often antisocial . At the same time social functions are dumped on nongovernmental organizations. On the other hand we see very strong rise of nationalist and conservative ideologies in Poland. It changes the situation of women, migrants, non-heteronormative people for worse and it’s getting hard to find public places which are friendly towards these groups. With our actions we want to show that we can self-organize, we can decide about the issues that concern our life and we can develop social solidarity.